A Few Updates

A Few Updates

   Some recent developments and studies have been released which may become previews of what's happening overall in our world, and what might happen should we not change our path.  The climate is always in the news, these warm years making history as glaciers give way and we near an apparent tipping point of sorts.  Meanwhile, our population continues to grow and the demands we are making on our planet to keep us sustained might prove taxing in the next decade.  From food to water, our earth seems to be giving and giving and giving...and may be reaching the point of giving up.

   One interesting report came from the U.S. Geological Survey which has a new winner for the title of which state has the most earthquakes, a title that once was reserved for California.  The new leader is Oklahoma whose earthquakes jumped nearly 300% for those earthquakes measuring over 3.0 on the Richter scale.  According to a brief article in National Geographic, "Scientists can't say definitively, but new research funded by the U.S. Geological Survey notes that as quakes increased in number, so did the use of injection wells that bury waste water from fracking and other oil and gas operations...says hydrogeology researcher Matthew Weingarten: 'You can only push so much water through a straw before pressure builds.'...Is more regulation needed?  Mike Teague, Oklahoma's energy and environment secretary, says the state will decide once it has more data, which it gets from the oil and gas industry." 

   This earthly underground rebellion of sorts is mimicked by the methane craters appearing in Siberia, something scientists think might be caused by the melting permafrost (the video on the link above will show the size of these craters).  And while a few of the methane releases have ignited explosively, what might be more worrisome is that the permafrost melting is also occurring in the Arctic.  And for those worried about our carbon emissions,  methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, at least at trapping radiation.  As mentioned in National Geographic:  Everywhere on Earth ice is changing.  The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912.  Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035.  Arctic sea ice has thinned significantly over the past half century, and its extent has declined by about 10 percent in the past 30 years.  NASA's repeated laser altimeter readings show the edges of Greenland's ice sheet shrinking.  Spring freshwater ice breakup in the Northern Hemisphere now occurs nine days earlier than it did 150 years ago, and autumn freeze-up ten days later.  Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet (4.6 meters) in parts of Alaska. From the Arctic to Peru, from Switzerland to the equatorial glaciers of Man Jaya in Indonesia, massive ice fields, monstrous glaciers, and sea ice are disappearing, fast.

   This might seem difficult to accept for those trapped in what seems an exceptionally cold winter as ocean currents shift and seem to push the jet stream in ever northerly patterns.  One such pattern that might be affected in a different way is that of the phosphorous carried by winds from the Sahara to the Amazon rainforest providing essential replenishing nutrients, something that can be viewed by satellites (and shown in the earlier NOVA Earth From Space).  The Amazon has been collectively titled the earth's "lungs," and its decline and the decline of smaller forests is steadily being recognized as replanting is being done in earnest.  But even that is leading to debates about "sterile" forests devoid of animal and insect life, and doing little but looking attractive (this was especially noticeable in New Zealand where trees grown for wood exports stand in rows as neat as corn fields, undulating over hill after hill;  in the U.S. such forested stands exist but are carefully hidden from view by buffers of other tree plantings designed to make the forest seem "natural" to views from passing cars on the roads).

   In my next posting, I'll be writing about another big update, that of our worldwide antibiotic usage, 80% of which goes into our animals and the meat we consume.  But as always, bear in mind that this is a blog, fact-checked as much as possible by me but then I am not a professional fact-checker (yes, that profession does exist).  Do your research and take away from these posting what you will, for I only want to get you curious and thinking about what might or might not be happening on our planet and our lives.  The earth, our home, is very patient, but for us, the clock might indeed be ticking a bit more quickly.